Characteristics of wind power on Savonius rotor using a guide-box tunnel

This study investigates to improve and adjust the output power of Savonius rotor under various wind power and suggests the method of prevention the rotor from strong wind disaster. In this study, as the appropriate device to achieve the purpose of it, a guide-box tunnel is employed. The guide-box tunnel is like a rectangular box as wind passage in which a test rotor is included. The area ratio between the inlet and exit of it is variable to adjust the inlet mass flow rate or input power. At first, the experiment was conducted to find the adequate configuration which would provide the best relative performance. The present experiment, however, does not include the test to retain the guide-box tunnel from the strong wind. The experiments include the static torque test of the fixed rotor at any phase angle and the dynamic torque test at rotation of them. Consequently, it was found that the maximum rotor rotational speed was achieved in the range of the guide-box area ratio between 0.3 and 0.7 and the value of the output power coefficient of the rotor with guide-box tunnel of the area ratio 0.43 increases about 1.5 times with three blades and 1.23 times with two blades greater than that without guide-box tunnel, respectively. It seemed that the performance of Savonius rotor within the guide-box tunnel is comparable enough with other methods for augmentation and control of the output. Published by Elsevier Inc.